Written by Jiahui Li (nancy)
In order to gain a border understanding of online privacy that happened in people’s life, I looked up Twitter with web-scraping technique. Twitter as a social network is simply bring people closer to their interests and it’s still evolving with various options for its users. The network let users like create a profile, choose whom you would want to follow and post tweets which allow you share your mood and insight on the platform, as well as engage people build conversation around the world. All the tweets of people you follow appear as a shuffled list on your main Twitter page. Businesses have found Twitter to be an effective means of communication with their customers. The network connects businesses with their customers anytime, anywhere. However, it still has limitation of message number, following and follower.
On the other hand, twitter has built a unique function called “ Twitter Advanced Search”, which allow user to tailor search results to specific date ranges, people and more. This makes it easier to find specific Tweets. It been used for people who looking for specific topics and areas that can easy focus on their conversation between same topic. Based on the research, people has started against “privacy information usage” to protect their own information, they believe this is the most expedient way. Therefore, people share on Twitter with representative image, own experience, articles and videos to not only express their positions, but to encourage more people to protect their own online privacy. On the other hand, business also exist as a big part in Twitter Advanced Search that help people dealing with their privacy issues. (See the image below)
Get start of using web-scraping, I set up the key words as “ web personal online privacy”. Most of these tweets are surrounding suggestions and experience with how to protect personal information online to avoid commercial website. Besides, twitter doesn’t have much conversations to communicate the issue specific into the keywords I set up; most of them shared between 2009-2016. At the same time, I have identified how hashtags/key words trend over the time, between 2009-2010, most of people start think about their online privacy and ask for how can they protect the information not be used; after 2010, people described the issue and list “how to control”; in the most recent post, it listed “should you tape over your webcam? personal guide to online privacy”.
Then I reset the hashtags to “web use privacy”. In these tweets, it is clear that personal opinions and positions are significantly less than those advertisings, which are used to explain how people deal with privacy issue. In other words, few tweets posted the position of “People Limit Web Use Due To Privacy Concerns” happened in America. Concerns about privacy and security are discouraging people from posting to social networks, expressing controversial opinions, conducting online banking and shopping from online retailers.
It’s interesting to look at is there a video is shared on Twitter, which shows the online privacy secret that some big companies didn’t tell you. The video come up with creepy and strong music, the text put you in a serious atmosphere; engaging and warning people protect their online privacy.
(Vidivo.com 2010)
At the end, the positions and insights from different people all strongly proved the wealth of suggestions and experience through social media. It can help us get a deeper understanding of the seriousness of the issues, as well as provide more viable solutions. For future exploration and my design project, I would like using this data -scarping technique to generate a range of privacy data flow and make them visually express the seriousness of online privacy.
5 point summary:
- Twitter Advanced Search help people easily gather information and research on social media.
- People has stand out to against companies use their personal information without their concern.
- More effective solutions/suggestions surrounding online privacy can be found out with web-scraping technique
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Concerns about privacy and security are discouraging people from posting to social networks
- A commercial website need post a privacy policy if it collects personally identifiable info
Reference
Vidivo.com 2010, Online Privacy Secrets EXPOSED Commercial – What Google Isn’t Telling Us, video recording, YouTube, viewed 3 September 2016,<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYP_hZmcRgg>.
Emergent Practices 
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